Crime Bruleé

The first book in the culinary mystery with recipes series

Author:  Nancy Fairbanks

Berkley Prime Crime, 2001
Pages: 274 (paperback edition)

"Forty-something homemaker Carolyn Blue is through with cooking and cleaning.  She`s finally decided to throw in the dishtowel-and take on a dream job as a food writer.  Now her plate is filled with exotic locales, delectable foods, and even a dash of crime-to taste. She could very well get used to this.....

 Crime Brulee

It was a perfect arrangement.  Carolyn had already planned to accompany her husband to an academic conference in New Orleans-an event that meant visiting old college pals.  So why not use the opportunity to write a story about Cajun cuisine?  But just as she get a taste of Creole, she gets a bit of crime....Her friend Julienne disappears at a dinner party.  True, she had been fighting with her husband, but this only worries Carolyn more.  Now she has to put her taste-testing aside to search for answers-and the trail leads her right to an alligator swamp.  Carolyn better act fast, because in these parts, it's eat or be eaten......

Includes over a dozen delicious recipes!"

Given the opportunity, I would have read this book in one sitting.  Portions of Carolyn's food reviews are contained herein, giving the reader a taste of the cuisine of  Louisiana.  Recipes included herein include such enticements as Risotto Mille e Una Notte, Carol Lee's Avocado Stuffed Shrimp Remoulade, and Le Bistro Creme Brulee.

When Julienne disappears, Carolyn is the singular friend who believes there's foul play involved.  She is determined to find her friend and finds her very own life endangered as she pursues the mystery.  This is the first of Nancy Fairbanks' (pseudo for Nancy Herndon) culinary mysteries.  If you love food; eating, making or reading of; or you enjoy a good fast-paced mystery, you're going to devour this book.  Once you do so, like me, you'll be hungering for more of her works.  Others in this series include Truffled Feathers, Death a l'Orange, Chocolate Quake, The Perils of Paella, Holy Guacamole!, Mozzarella Most Murderous, Bon Bon Voyage, and French Fried.

Rating:  5\5



Plain Truth

Author:  Jodi Picoult

Published by Washington Square Press a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.

Pages:  405

Reader's Group Discussion Included

"The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster Country to its core.  But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure; circumstantial evidence suggests that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn's mother, took the child's life.  When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big-city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two cultures collide-and for the first time in her high-profile career, Ellie faces a system of justice very different from her own.  Delving deep inside the world of those who live "plain", Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms.  And as she unravels a tangled murder case, Ellie also looks deep within-to confront her own fears and desires when a man from her past re-enters her life."  (from the back cover of Plain Truth)

Well-written and captivating, this novel is the first of Jodi Picoult's that I have read.  Plain Truth holds your attention, draws the reader in and is hard to put down.  The characters are well-developed, and the lifestyle and culture of the Amish are well-portrayed.  The author did, after all, spend a week living with an Amish family, participating in chores and living as they do.  Not easily forgotten, this novel may enlist the reader in a quest to simplify their own lives and question their perspectives.  Not a bad thing.

Rated 3.5/5

*As administrator of a local Christian book club, I read this as a possible book of the month.  Though the author does an excellent job of drawing the reader in, I was not impressed with the explicit sex included in a couple areas within this novel.  As such, based upon language and sexual content, we cannot include this as a suggested read for discussion. 

Does popular fiction need to bridge the gap between moral and immoral to be popular? Perhaps books should have a labelling system similar to that of movies.  PG, R, General based upon content.  It would make things simpler when selecting books for discussion.  This reader intends to read another of Jodi Picoult's novels, My Sister's Keeper.  Hopefully the content will be agreeable for our group as a future read.

Persuasion

This last novel written by Jane Austen was published posthumously.  Set in the Victorian era amongst those of society where birth and title dictate proper decorum.  This is the story of Anne Elliot, the often overlooked daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, a man full of self-importance and vanity; and sister to Elizabeth and Mary.

At eight and twenty years (28) Anne is yet unmarried though her heart belongs to Colonel Frederick Wentworth.  Eight years previous they'd been engaged but he was not a man of circumstance and her friend Lady Russell persuaded her to break the engagement.  Broken-hearted, Frederick Wentworth went to sea, becoming a colonel and commander of his own vessel.  He made his "fortune" in the navy before returning to Anne's hometown.  Will they reconcile?  Will he forgive her?  Will she marry Mr.  Elliot?

This novel took me over a month to read.  Never before have I had such difficulty with a book.  Written in the early 1800's, the prose and style is one I am not accustomed to and it seemed so wordy to accomplish so little, dialogues didn't ensue quickly enough for me.  It was only in the final chapters that I found interest in the dilemmas of Anne and Frederick.  The final chapter seemed to pull things together too quickly, especially compared to the pace of the previous 23 chapters, as if the author wanted to be done with it.

My apologies to lovers of Jane Austen,  this must seem brutal.  I've read and love the likes of Agatha Christie, but that is a more recent era, and welcomed the challenge to expand my repertoire, so to speak.  If you have never read Jane Austen or the likes thereof, I highly recommend renting the movie version first, if available.  It was only after seeing the BBC film of Persuasion that I was able to accomplish the final chapters.  Don't let this dissuade you.  Welcome the challenge to broaden your horizons, the love story is beautiful!

Rated 3/5

Have You Read Six or More of These?

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here:

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte --hated it!!!
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Ok, I thought I was rather well-read, but after going through this list I find myself coming up short.  You  may have read this list on Facebook.  My niece posted it on her page and I decided it to be post worthy here.  So tell me, dear reader, how many/which ones have you read? Which have you started but didn't finish?  How many/which ones are on your reading to do list?  I think I've read about 11 of these.  Do tell.......

Up and Running!

It appears my issues with posting have been resolved so check back soon for reviews of what I've been reading!  Coming soon:  Crime Brulee by Nancy Fairbanks, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult, to name a few.

Dear readers, I am experiencing technical difficulties with this blog and am unable to write new posts. If anyone has suggestions, please leave a comment! Thank you.

Amazon Doesn't Believe in Censorship!!! Bad Press!!

Watching the news this morning, I was dismayed appalled to hear that a popular online retailer, Amazon, has among its listings, a guide for pedophiles!!  They cited that while they don't condone criminal activity, they also don't believe in censorship (paraphrased). See Blog Fairfield House  for further details. 

On the news they said Amazon has pulled the title from its listings, however it does not end there.  Apparently there are other titles listed with Amazon of equally disdainful content.  It is a criminal offense to have such materials in your possession.  Shouldn't it be criminal to sell such items?  I have written an email to express my disappointment in this practice.  We shall see what they have to say.  I will keep you posted.

I encourage you to do the same.  Go to their site, go to help, in the right hand column select "contact" and write.  Make your opinion known!  Make your voice count!  For the rights of innocent children everywhere, please make a stand.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Our local book club read for the month of November is "Persuasion" by Jane Austen.  This novel is Jane Austen's last completed novel and was published posthumously December 1817.  Her works stand the test of time, a tribute to a woman who wrote novels highly valued in the English literary tradition.

Persuasion -  first line, first page "Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage, there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one, there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents, there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt."  Possibly the longest written sentence in history, thus begins the story.

Touted the story of Jane's most memorable heroine, Persuasion's lead character is Anne Elliot, "a young woman of breeding, depth of emotion and unswerving integrity." (from the back cover).  Anne is a strong woman who finds freedom from less than ideal familial relations through her relationships with other women of strength.  Personal fulfillment, something every human desires, is hers in this novel where men and women are equals in morality and roles of hero and heroine are reversed.

Thus begins the read of the month.   

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie

Her childhood, stories of the life she hid well, her rise to fame and fortune, the romanticism with which she partially revealed her upbringing...all here in this new biography by Justine Picardie. Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life. Now available from Harper Collins Publishing.

Shoe Addicts Annonymous

Author:  Beth Harbison.  Copyright 2007.  Published by St. Martin's Press, New York. 344 pages

"Four different women.  One common shoe size.  And a shared lust for fabulous footwear."

Synopsis:  "Helene Zaharis' politician husband keeps her on a tight leash and cancels her credit cards as a way of controlling her.  Lorna Rafferty is up to her eyeballs in debt and can't stop her addiction to eBay.  Sandra Vanderslice, battling agoraphobia, pays her shoe bills by working as a phone-sex operator.  And Jocelyn Bowen is a nanny for the family from hell.  (who barely knows a sole from a heel but who will do anything to get out of the house).

On Tuesday nights, these women meet to trade shoes and, in the process, form friendships that will help them each triumph over their problems-from secret pasts to blackmail, bankruptcy, and dating.  "Funny emotional, and powerful...." so reads the back cover.

This is an interesting and unique story of four women from different walks of life brought together under the guise of shoe addiction.  What happens between them and in each of their lives is a result of this meeting of minds.  A good story, though too descriptive in sexual detail.  If you like a good read without this detail, skip this book.

Soon to be made into a movie with Halle Berry cast as one of the lead characters, this book has been on the national bestseller list.  If the movie stays close to the plot, it will have to be rated 18A.

Rated 3/5